Ellison explained to us that "beer goggles" are really rooted in our brains. Drinking alcohol doesn't change the way we take in and process visual information, it just makes us more liberal when we drink.

"It is not that beer goggles don’t exist … they do. But it is the interpretation of the term that seems to be the issue. It doesn’t change our perceptions of people (the[y] don’t look different in an absolute visual sense), just the decisions that we make based on those perceptions are different," Ellison wrote.

This is supported by a paper published in the British Journal of Psychology in May of 2009, which found that: "Alcohol consumption significantly inflated attractiveness ratings for participants viewing made-up sexually mature faces."

Ellison says this additional attractiveness could very well be because we make poorer decisions while drunk. This same decision-making issue "explains why people think it’s a good idea to dance on plastic chairs perched on tables, or why they think that kebab on the way home was a great idea …" she wrote.